1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the telecommunications field, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus for responding to anonymous calls within a telecommunications network.
2. Description of Related Art
Traditionally, the home telephone has facilitated communications between friends and family. However, many calls received during the evening are from organizations seeking to sell products or collect donations. Because these calls are unsolicited and usually unwelcome, there is a great demand for subscriber features which enable telephone customers to curtail the ability of outside organizations to invade their privacy at home. Exemplary and commonly known subscriber features which have been developed to help the consumer include Caller ID, Anonymous Call Rejection, Specified Call Blocking and Do Not Disturb. In general, these features either provide information to the called party about an incoming call or operate to reject a call for a specified reason.
A problem with anonymous call rejection is that an anonymous calling party is forced to hang-up and redial the called party phone number in a non-anonymous manner. In other words, the call is routed with specified information which identifies the calling party. Frequently, telephone service subscribers make outgoing calls anonymous by default. This capability is often ordered as a part of the telephone service provided by the phone company. Consequently, all outgoing calls are unidentifiable anonymous calls.
In some situations, however, a calling party is unable to deactivate the anonymous call feature after a call has been blocked. For example, a calling party's employer may require all calls to be made anonymously through default, as described above. Accordingly, a calling party that is an employee will not be authorized to deactivate the anonymous calling feature. In other scenarios, the calling party may not know the anonymous call feature deactivation code. In both of these cases, a call will not be connected to the called party because the calling party was not able to deactivate the anonymous call feature. Even if the calling party is able to de-activate the anonymous calling feature, the calling party must, under current systems, hang up, dial a specified code, and redial the called party phone number in order to place the call. What is needed, therefore, is a way to allow a calling party to deactivate the anonymous calling feature for a current call without being forced to hang-up and redial.